Would be easier to simply restrict the tents to a 50 foot area at the back of the beach, by the grass / dunes / hotels. This would leave a large section of the beach for the traditional umbrella & chair combo.

This past week we saw a few along the each at high tide mark. No big deal. Beach was far from being crowded and there weren't enough canopies to be a problem. There was one I wish I had taken a picture of but I was afraid it might have offended the owners if they had seen me.

This was a legal sized canopy. I guess. Maybe 10x10. It wasn't just a canopy. The legs were covered in fabric and sides were rolled up. Sides could fold down and zip in place to form a large tent. It wasn't at the high tide mark. It was down on the flat packed sand of low tide. No lifeguards on duty so it was probably legal. Still it took up a good area of prime low tide beach. As the tide started to come in dozens of people had to walk around it.

One chair under the canopy. No cooler. No towels or bags......One.... chair. Nobody in it. Nobody anywhere near it. You can bet. If asked. The owners would swear they couldn't be at the beach without it.

Quote Alan:"If asked. The owners would swear they couldn't be at the beach without it."

LOL! Bet you are right! A little like the closing of the Pavilion. Nobody wanted it to close, but if I asked them the last time they were there, they looked at me indignantly and said "We ALWAYS went there as kids." And I would reply "So did I...but I haven't been there since we moved here."

I think the Pavilion was a symbol of comfort and good memorties to all of us who loved it. And there is something special about our feelings of comfort, whether it's a certain food, a snip of music, or a book you read and loved.

This is in front of Apache campground july 4, 2012 the year the tent law went into effect you can just see my yellow umbrella behind the life gaurd stand. The year before it was solid tents where that umbrella line is the life gaurd had to fight just to get her umbrellas up.

I don't mind the umbrellas, but I do mind entire camp sites on the beach! Last year we were at 79th Street, which is usually very quiet as it is all residential. Husband and I got there early, around 9:00 a.m., and had a nice spot with two chairs, a cooler and two beach towels laid out in front of us.

Around 10:30 in comes a group of about 30 people. They pitched three huge tents in front of us, blocking our view and the sun. They had a boom box that you could hear all the way back to the dunes. They walked all over our towels getting to and from their tents.

We thought this was a one time rude thing until the same thing happened the next day. We had, and I am not kidding, about six inches between us and the next large group. My mom, who lives here, told us that this area of the beach, because there is no life guard, has been attracting these huge groups who pitch these tent villages. Please ban these!

Officials in Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Surfside Beach and Horry County will gather a consensus in their own areas on beach tents and bring those suggestions to the Coastal Alliance meeting in February.

Talks on whether to crack down on the bulky canopy-style beach tents have been ongoing for about two years, and reaching a decision has been bumped back for months. Now with the clock ticking before the estimated 14 million tourists make their way to the Grand Strand this spring and summer, area officials will decide if they should ban the beach tents, which has caused headaches for emergency personnel responding to patients on the beach, or restrict them to less populated areas.

“I think what we need to do is we need to put this to rest,” said Marilyn Hatley, mayor of North Myrtle Beach and member of the Coastal Alliance. “Take it back to our councils, find out what the board feels about it and then get back to each other and go from there.”

In December, North Myrtle Beach flirted with the idea of banning the tents in three areas of beach where erosion has made the beach too small to handle all the canopies, but it was voted down. Concerns centered around confusion for beachgoers and the thought that if they are restricted in some areas, tent owners would simply migrate to other areas where the tents were allowed. That, too, was an overall concern for cities in that if they were banned completely in one city, tourists would take their tent, and tourism dollars, to another city.

“If we do it all together, then I think the reception will be there because of the safety issue,” said Myrtle Beach Mayor John Rhodes, chairman of the alliance, which includes representatives from Horry County, Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach and other cities. The alliance can agree in principle, but the governing bodies in each area must approve any changes to the existing tent rules.

The first test of the resolve to ban the tents will come at the North Myrtle Beach City Council meeting Monday night. A proposed ban has already been presented to the council there, and members took no action pending a recommendation from the alliance.

Horry County Council Chairman Mark Lazarus said other alliance members will be watching the vote closely.

“We’re going to kind of follow North Myrtle Beach,” Lazarus said of the county’s path to a possible ban.

The potential ban is the latest strategy officials have come up with in recent years to handle the growing use of tents on Grand Strand beaches, which they say can get in the way of emergency personnel. Tent users say they need the shade during their daylong trips to the beach.

Under the current laws along the Grand Strand, beachgoers can’t use tents larger than 12 feet-by-12 feet, have to set them up on the land side of the lifeguard’s umbrella line and be at least 10 feet away from another tent. Tent users must secure the tents with lines that don’t stick out from the tent’s borders. Tents can’t go up before 8 a.m. and must be down by 7 p.m.

Lifeguards have said they spent a lot of time explaining the rules to the new rounds of tourists each week during the summer.

Lazarus said he will propose an ordinance that will mirror what North Myrtle Beach considers and present it to County Council members at a workshop in two weeks. Lazarus said he will have staff from the county’s Public Safety department talk about some of the problems with the plethora of tents.

The main problem Lazarus sees is one of access to the beach by public safety officials.

He said that at high tide, there may be only six feet to eight feet of beach above water and tents create an impassable blockade if someone needs emergency assistance.

He said there already are so many beach tents that county officials are spending more time dealing with the problems they cause instead of other things they should be doing.

Rhodes said the problem goes beyond public safety.

Some people set up charcoal grills at their beach tents. He said there have even reports of people stringing hoses from campgrounds to their beach tents to fill up child swimming pools on the beach.

Lazarus said it’s increasingly common that vacationers will set up tents as soon as they are legally allowed after they arrive. They won’t take them down for their entire visit, he said. And more than a few leave them on the beach when they go home.

Wow, that picture of all the tents from this article is hard to even look at... All you can see are tents! It would be really frustrating constantly battling them to have a nice day at the beach for someone without a tent. We haven't ever had a real issue with them in our way during our trips, maybe we're lucky. I have never seen them as congested as that photo!

I can see why tents are nice and necessary for some circumstances, but I would think it would be beneficial to have them in only certain areas and X feet back. There are parts of the Grand Strand that have wide beaches that can handle them, and other areas can't. In the areas with wide beaches, I would think they wouldn't cause too many issues if they were far back, closer to the dunes.

Sher1234 - I cringed when you mentioned they walked over your towels!! SO RUDE. I could almost feel the sand all over your towels!

Ash, I agree. The beaches in North MB are a lot wider. The beaches at Surfside and Garden City are narrow, even at high tide, and there is not much room to move between tents.

I rooted around to find this one, taken on July 4, 2011. That's the Surfside Pier on the right, and even without a bunch of tents, it would be hard to navigate through the crowd if there were an emergency.